


Something To Keep You Warm

by berlynn_wohl



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Anal Sex, Crying, Docking, First Time, Foreskin Play, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-09
Updated: 2019-07-09
Packaged: 2020-06-25 09:14:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19742644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/berlynn_wohl/pseuds/berlynn_wohl
Summary: Two men on the run, a hideout in the wilderness, and only! one! bed! It's baby's first Otasune fic. You've read this story before, but not written by me. ;)





	Something To Keep You Warm

**Author's Note:**

> This fic contains brief references to canonical past sexual abuse but it is not explicitly described.

1.

Snake slipped his hand through the cracked-open door of the cabin, feeling for a light switch. He did not like to enter an unfamiliar dark room if he could enter an illuminated one. Just before flicking on the switch that he found, he uttered an interrogative grunt, as if he’d come across something unexpected.

“Wood paneling,” he said by way of explanation. With his pistol in his other hand, he swung the door open and cleared the room.

Otacon remained outside but peered in over Snake’s shoulder. His eyes were open as wide as he could get them, and they darted around with purpose, but he knew he still was not seeing a fraction of what Snake could detect. He did see the wood paneling, though, a definite change from the unfinished wood and drywall of some of their previous hideouts.

And as he stepped into the two-room cabin on Snake’s all-clear signal, he saw several other modern-yet-ancient relics: a three-component stereo, with turntable, cassette deck, and AM/FM radio; a Zenith television and top-loading VCR; an electric stove with push-buttons instead of dials.

“We’re moving up in the world,” Snake said. “Next time you talk to Mei Ling, you’ll have to tell her not to spoil us so much. We might get used to it.”

“I don’t imagine I’ll be talking to her anytime soon,” Otacon said as he checked out the tiny bathroom. “Not until my modem and satellite dish get replaced.”

“Sorry about that, by the way. It was not in my interest either for the van to get rolled into the river.” Snake surveyed the room a second time, more casually now, taking in all its features. “There’s that hi-fi you need,” he said flatly, pointing at the stereo.

“I need _wi-fi_ ,” Otacon snapped, and Snake chuckled. Otacon knew that Snake knew the difference, he just liked to needle once in a while. Otacon decided to needle back: “You know, the internet used to just go through wires, but now it can be transmitted through the atmosphere, which means that whenever you’ve been around me, anime that I was downloading was transferred literally _through_ your body. Think about all the binary data representing magical girls and Mary Sue senpais that has passed through you. Can you feel it, Snake? Can you feel the anime that has been inside your body?”

Snake blinked. “That’s bizarre to the point where it doesn’t affect me.”

Otacon shrugged. “I tried.”

Snake clapped him on the shoulder. “I’m sure the replacement equipment will be delivered before you know it. In the meantime, you’ve got that external hard drive full of new data, right?”

“Yeah. What about you, though? What will you do until we can get Philanthropy back on track?”

Snake looked at the wood stove in the corner, the axe leaning against it, and the empty expanse of brick next to it. “Guess I’ll get started on the firewood,” he said, grabbing the axe.

***

Otacon picked up the framed photograph on top of the television. In it, a man and a woman, each probably about twenty-five, clutched one grinning toddler apiece to their chests. Going by the clothes and hair, the picture looked to have been taken in the late 1980’s. It would be understandable why the family in the picture hadn’t made use of this cabin in years. The children would have grown into tech-savvy teenagers who would come to find this remote getaway primitive and boring, with nothing they considered entertainment for miles around. And then, the divorce – that was Otacon’s understanding of the situation from Mei Ling. The man in the picture, ex-military but still in-the-know, didn’t visit the cabin anymore but could not bring himself to sell it off, and was happy to let Philanthropy use it as a safe-house. Snake was outside, so Otacon whispered aloud to the photo, “Thank you.”

How Mei Ling was scraping together miracles like this cabin was beyond Otacon; but he supposed it wasn’t for him to know. His job was to code and to analyze data – stolen data. And he had plenty right now, in an external hard drive, and digging into it would be fun – although Snake’s comments over the past few months had made Otacon wonder if “fun” was really the correct word. Maybe it was better described as “absorbing”? Anyway, it was that zone where he could sit at a keyboard for two days straight without food or sleep. It wasn’t that Snake had tried to change how Otacon felt about that _per se_ , but he did point out that most people’s idea of “fun” did not exclude the possibility of showering regularly, and it was very rare indeed that people associated “fun” activities with peeing in an empty soda bottle under the table instead of getting up to use a bathroom.

Today, however, Otacon was feeling a strange reluctance to dive in to the intel they had collected on their last recon mission. The loss of so much life, just because of one unexpected shift change at the facility they were investigating, and then the destruction of nearly all their equipment to boot; all that they had left was what Otacon could hold in his arms as he dove out of the doomed van.

He knew it was wrong to be soured by that experience. But it was their most dramatic reminder yet that what they were doing was not only dangerous, but also, quite possibly, futile.

Otacon let the bag with his remaining tech slip from his shoulder and fall to the shag carpet. Then he moved to the sofa, where he grabbed the slipcover and pulled it away in two awkward tugs, revealing the scratchy orange upholstery beneath. They were going to be here for a while, laying low, until their equipment was replaced and the heat was off them, so they might as well get comfortable here. He revealed the armchair in a similar fashion; it was not orange but teal, a relic from the same design era but clearly a totally different house, someone’s hand-me-down.

That was when he remembered that they had a bag of perishables with them. He took the five steps back to the kitchen area, opened the fridge, stuck a hand inside, closed the fridge, and then felt around behind it for the power cord so he could plug it in.

After putting the food away, he opened a cupboard, and found a set of dishes soiled with mouse droppings. He pulled them down onto the counter and turned the knobs on the sink (two separate faucets, one for cold, one for hot, geez), pleased when water that came sputtering out soon turned clear.

He scraped the droppings into the now-empty grocery bag while the sink filled. Then, dunking the dishes in the water, he looked out the window, feeling nothing like a mid-century housewife even though he was tackling a distinctly domestic chore while observing his bigger, stronger counterpart through the kitchen window, performing physical labor. The electricity was solar, so there was no gas generator to drown out the soothing sounds of nature from outside, punctuated by Snake’s chopping.

Otacon didn’t have many opportunities to see Snake hard at work; he was always elsewhere during missions, in a safe location, hacking security systems and feeding intel. And while sometimes Snake would exercise in whatever hovel they were staying in, doing two hundred push-ups or suchlike, he preferred cross-country training, for which the Alaskan and Canadian wilderness was a boon, and Otacon just couldn’t keep up with him on those runs. Watching him chop wood was a treat; it was so ridiculously rugged and manly, and Otacon knew that if he waited around long enough, even on a freezing day like today, eventually Snake would overheat in his coat and gloves, and would strip to the waist before continuing.

Watching Snake work up a sweat gave Otacon the same squirmy feeling in his stomach that he got watching Snake disassemble, clean, and reassemble his guns. Masculine competency, he supposed, something he lacked. Otacon’s face got hot, and he cleared his throat, as if there were someone there to witness his embarrassment about his own arousal. He knew he should not be having those feelings about Snake. Not because Snake was a man, or because he was a colleague of sorts, but because after Shadow Moses, Otacon believed he should not be having those feelings about _anyone_ , at all, _ever_. Snake’s fury over his crush on Sniper Wolf made him realize once and for all what a disaster he was when it came to romantic interest.

Julie was only the first mistake he’d made – and despite what the therapist had told him, he did still think of it as his mistake; fifteen was basically an adult, maybe not truly old enough to know better, but old enough to understand what was happening, and that it was wrong. He could have put a stop to it, if he’d really wanted to, and he hadn’t. And it wasn’t like he’d learned his lesson after that. There was more than one professor at MIT whose memories of his dedication and ingenuity were likely overshadowed by his poorly-concealed infatuation with them. He was grateful that none of them had taken advantage, but at the time, he would have done anything for the extra attention. Sniper Wolf was just the most recent in a string of people who wielded some kind of authority over him and were rewarded with his useless, soppy devotion.

And so why he was so charmed by Snake was a mystery to him – sure, Snake was a flawless physical specimen with a masculine mystique, but that wasn’t really Otacon’s _type_. Ultimately, though, it didn’t matter who was whose type; a year after Sniper Wolf’s death, Otacon remained determined to resist his urges, to fight and shove down the slightest inkling of attraction, now and forever. He couldn’t be trusted to feel those feelings anymore, not now that the slightest mistake, the briefest moment of idiocy, could destroy everything they’d fought for.

Snake didn’t make it easy, though. Just as Otacon had suspected, after twenty-five minutes of work, his coat and shirt were on the ground, and he was swinging the axe with his sleek muscles flexing and his tanned skin gleaming with perspiration under the winter sun. The fact that he never looked back through the window, never winked or preened or otherwise acknowledged that he was in any way aware of his sexiness, just made everything that much more frustrating.

Otacon closed the linen curtains and put the dishes away.

***

Once he started actually digging into the records they’d collected from the facility the following day, Otacon wondered why he’d put it off. He slipped effortlessly into Hacker Mode, picking apart the data, finding the weaknesses, brainstorming exploits, and everything was so simple again – no, not simple, but logical. Linear. _Elegant_.

An indeterminate amount of time later, he was shaken from this hypnosis by the slamming of the front door. “Didn’t mean to,” Snake said when Otacon whipped his head around to see what the ruckus was about. “The wind did that.”

“I feel like you were gone on that run for a while,” Otacon remarked, rolling his shoulders and cracking his back.

“Not really. Wait, you mean this one, or the one I went on this morning?”

“What do you mean, this morning?”

“I went on a run this morning. Then I came back. I read for a while, watched a movie. I heated up two cans of Spaghetti-Os and I left you half on the stove. Then I went out for another run.”

Otacon blinked. “You came back?” He pointed at the sofa. “You were here?”

Snake looked disapprovingly at the computer. “You need to give that thing a rest.” He ducked into the bathroom, and Otacon heard the shower come on. He got up and went over to the stove, where a pot of Spaghetti-Os sat, cold and sludgy.

“Huh,” he said to no one.

***

Wherever they were hiding out, if the place had a bed at all, Snake usually had some reason why Otacon should have it which, conveniently, never had anything to do with chivalry. _You keep the most godawful hours_ , for example. _How am I supposed to relax in here if your carcass is cluttering up the couch in the middle of the afternoon?_

In this place, it was a trade-off, because the bedroom did not benefit from the heat of the wood stove. It was hard to choose between the cold of the bed and the thin, lumpy sofa. Sometimes they discussed this, but never in any conclusive way, never in a way that resulted in their switching the arrangement, or being motivated to. It certainly didn’t help Otacon’s sleep schedule; he was as reluctant as ever to leave his computer and the relative warmth of the living room.

On the third night in their new place, too sleepy to sit up straight but unwilling to go to bed, Otacon compromised by curling up with his laptop on the sofa. After just a few minutes, he nodded off there. He awoke to find that he was being carried to bed. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled, “it won’t happen again.” Through his stupor, he was disappointed that he was now being a physical burden, just as he felt he was a burden to Snake in other ways, an unathletic and vulnerable civilian.

But after laying Otacon down on the bed and tugging the blankets over him, Snake proceeded to crawl under the covers as well.

“This is the only sensible solution,” he said gruffly. “Now we can both have the bed _and_ stay warm.”

The moment Snake was settled in, he lay perfectly still, the only movement his breathing, and shortly thereafter was snoring softly. They had shared a bed (or folded-down back seat) before, out of necessity, but always facing away from each other, at opposite sides, giving each other the maximum amount of space. But now he was close, much closer than he needed to be in a full-size bed. If doing this was an attempt at seduction, however, it was an odd one indeed, because he’d fallen asleep in minutes, so Otacon had to conclude that it was really merely a practical arrangement. Already, where their arms touched, he could feel the heat radiating off Snake. Soon he was warm all over from sharing the space, warmer than he’d been in weeks, and it was heavenly.

At first he lay stiffly, waiting to be mistaken about Snake being asleep, waiting for him to make a move, then wondering if _he_ ought to make a move. But nothing happened. Eventually the stab of adrenaline he’d felt melted away, and he got drowsy again, and drifted cozily into sleep.

2.

The television received nothing but static, and the selection of movies on VHS was limited. Snake was not in the mood to watch _Caddyshack_ or _Trading Places_ , so he cleaned his SOCOM in silence. He hadn’t had a chance to do this right after their last mission, as things had descended into chaos toward the end and stayed there for some time, and even after moving here, he’d felt too restless to tend to this chore.

But this morning he’d woken up refreshed and calm, and now looked forward to it, as he found field-stripping and cleaning firearms to be pleasantly meditative. He was a little mystified as to why Otacon picked up his laptop and moved to the other side of the dining table the moment he set the SOCOM and the cleaning kit on the coffee table; it was fine, except now Snake couldn’t see his face. He liked being able to look at Otacon’s face when he worked on the computer, to catch his intermittent expressions of concentration: he would bite his lip, or stick his tongue out a little.

But the sight of him was still endearing: Otacon had come out of the shower that morning in just a clean t-shirt and boxers, and in lieu of putting on warmer clothing, had opted for the lower effort of wrapping himself in the comforter, with only his hands sticking out to type, a little hacker burrito. Snake smiled at him, knowing Otacon could not see it, then tuned back to his work.

Snake had never claimed to understand anything Otacon did at the computer – which was fine, it wasn’t his job to understand. You could put a gun to his head (and people occasionally did) and he still wouldn’t be able to tell by looking at the screen whether Otacon was programming, or hacking (were those the same thing? Snake had the impression that they sometimes were), or exchanging messages with Mei Ling, or playing a very, very boring video game. But it didn’t matter; what mattered was when Otacon had finished something he’d been working on, and explained to Snake what it actually _did_. “You know how I wrote that program that works with your nanomachines to reduce the production of lactic acid in your muscles, so you won’t have as much fatigue? Well, I localized the controls to your sneaking suit, so you won’t have to worry about relying on me to activate it. You can initiate a manual override if you need to, and the controls can’t be remotely hacked.” That was all Snake needed to know about the hours Otacon had spent at the keyboard, and it was results like that which gave Snake such an immense respect for what Otacon did.

When Snake had finished his task and set aside the SOCOM, the brushes, and the oily rag, he thought about whether it was time to start dinner. He suggested this to Otacon, but got nothing but a grunt in return. A grunt from the usually chatty Otacon meant he had no intention of leaving his computer, but also had no surplus energy to express this in a more cordial way.

Checking the time again, Snake realized that Otacon had been working for seven hours straight, not a record for him by any means but not a healthy amount of time to be hunched over a computer. As grateful as he was for the results, it bothered him that Otacon worked as much as he did. It had surprised Otacon, the first time Snake had insisted he take a break, eat and sleep. Perhaps civilians who’d seen a lot of movies thought that soldiers treated everyday life like a contest to see who could go the longest without fuel or rest. But a good soldier never subjected themselves to that kind of torment voluntarily. Sleep and nutrition were essential for peak performance.

Snake believed this about everyone, but with Otacon he was particularly irritated about the long hours and the diet of coffee. It was only natural that he felt this way, of course; Otacon was his most valuable ally now, so he ought to be protective. Perhaps it hadn’t been necessary to pick Otacon up and carry him to bed the other night, but it had worked, hadn’t it? Otacon had gotten a solid ten hours of sleep that night, and since then had stopped avoiding the cold bedroom, so long as Snake was next to him to keep him warm. It was a brilliant strategy on his part, frankly.

That was how Snake knew that while Otacon could be resistant to attempts to get him to take care of himself, sometimes if he could just be pried from his laptop for a few minutes, the spell would be broken and he would decide, “independently,” that an actual meal or a nap was in order.

Snake tried this now. “Why don’t you take a break and sit over here with me for a while?” he asked.

When Otacon turned to look at him, Snake patted the empty spot on the sofa, one eyebrow raised. Otacon stood up, picked up the laptop, carried it over to the sofa, sat down, and resumed his tapping away at the keyboard. Snake just stared in disbelief at Otacon’s poor interpretation of his suggestion, until Otacon looked up and said, “Were we going to watch something, or…?”

“I meant to take a break from the _computer_ , not take a break from sitting at the table.”

“Oh, I can’t do that. There’s just so much to do. But thanks for the suggestion. I didn’t think of it before, but keeping my computer on my lap is a great idea. It gives off a lot of heat, so it’ll help keep me warm. Some coffee would help too, though.”

Snake had two choices about how to react to this: lose his temper, or make the coffee. He decided to make the coffee, but only after reasoning that he could always lose his temper later if he really thought it would be a good idea.

But when he set the steaming mug on the table in front of Otacon, he felt an odd pang, a sudden steely determination to see that the coffee went cold and untouched. He plopped back down, and when Otacon took his hand off the keyboard to reach for the mug, Snake snatched the laptop away from him, closing it and sticking it between the cushion he was sitting on and the arm of the sofa.

Otacon set the mug down again instantly, carelessly, leaving a splash of coffee on the table. “Hey, what gives?” He reached across Snake to take the laptop back, which only aided Snake in his mission: to grab Otacon around the waist and lift him out of the comforter and onto himself.

“What are you doing?” Otacon yelped.

“Thought it was a pretty good idea, having something in your lap to keep you warm.”

Otacon wriggled until he seemed to figure out that Snake was no longer actually holding him or restraining him in any way. Snake was not about to wrestle Otacon into submission. He reasoned that if Otacon didn’t want to be in his lap, he would dismount. But he also understood by now that Otacon was the kind of person who might need a helping hand to figure out for himself if he _did_ want to be in someone’s lap.

Otacon looked down at both sides of him, as though he were perched at a precipitous height. He whined a little bit more. He pushed up his glasses. But he stayed.

“Feel warmer now?” Snake asked, returning one, and only one, hand to Otacon’s thigh. But Otacon still seemed uneasy. Snake waited for him to do or say something.

“It’s not that I don’t like you,” Otacon finally said, fidgeting. “But I’m not good at…people. What I mean to say is, bad things happen to people I like.”

Snake gave Otacon’s thigh a squeeze. “Bad things happen to me anyway. Might as well enjoy ourselves in the meantime.”

“But what if it’s not a good idea for us to be together? What if we only think we like each other because we’re all we have left, and we’re the only ones we can trust?”

Snake had to laugh a little at this. “If you think those are not good reasons to be with someone, then maybe you’re right, maybe you aren’t good at people.”

“Well, if you’re such an expert at romance—”

“I’m really not.”

“Then why don’t you—” Otacon seemed to lose his train of thought when Snake slipped his hand just under the hem of Otacon’s t-shirt and caressed the smooth, soft skin over his ribs. He didn’t mean to shut Otacon up, he didn’t mind the sound of Otacon’s voice at all, he was just tired of having Otacon in his lap and not touching him.

Snake looked up from what he was doing and examined Otacon’s face, which was mostly covered by his hands now. “What’s the matter? Why are you turning red?”

“Because you’re touching me,” Otacon said, his voice tremulous. “And I don’t have a, uh, nice body like you do.”

“I like your body just fine.” Snake wanted to tell Otacon to stop being embarrassed, but in general he didn’t like to tell Otacon not to have feelings; it was refreshing to be around someone who expressed themselves unabashedly. Instead, as was usually his solution, a distraction was in order. “You think I have a nice body, huh?”

Otacon didn’t respond, just nodded behind his hands.

“Prove it, since you’ve got it right in front of you.”

Keeping one hand across his face to hide his blushing, Otacon held his other hand out and brought it close with ridiculous caution, as though Snake were a stove burner and Otacon was checking to see if it was still hot. One fingertip at a time, he sneaked under Snake’s sweater, gasping softly when he made contact with bare skin.

“You do pushups with your shirt off,” Otacon said, softly, but making it sound like a complaint. “It always distracts me from whatever task I have at hand.”

“Well, now I’m your task at hand,” Snake reassured him, and Otacon grew more bold, not necessarily less embarrassed but less able to control his impulses, and both his cold hands slid further up into Snake’s sweater, seeking the warmth of his chest, his armpits. Snake gritted his teeth to help him withstand the sudden icy onslaught. Soon enough, though, Otacon’s hands were warmed, and the caress of fingertips across his nipples was pleasant. Snake started to get hard, and his erection bumped against Otacon’s arm and wrist as he moved.

Vocalizing softly with each breath, Otacon grabbed the waistband of Snake’s sweatpants with both hands and tugged them outwards and down, until Snake’s cock sprang up. He didn’t touch it at first, just stared at it, which made Snake apprehensive.

“You’re, um.” Otacon pushed his glasses up. “You’re not…” He finally reached for Snake’s cock, handling it like he’d never seen one before. With just his thumb and first two fingers, he slid the foreskin back and forth, making it pout past the glans.

Snake had a suspicion, then, of what Otacon was marveling at. “Yeah, I’ve got the original factory settings, you could say.”

“Sorry to be weird about it.” Otacon laughed nervously. “I’m, uh, Jewish. God gave us some very specific instructions about how we had to jailbreak ourselves.” Apparently his embarrassment was gone now, because he tugged his boxers down without hesitation, to confirm what he’d said. It was easily apparent where the procedure had been completed: his erection was pink at the tip, suddenly turning darker, almost brown, about halfway down the shaft.

“It’s fine,” said Otacon, “except I always wondered what it felt like to still have a, you know…”

“Maybe I can help with that,” Snake offered. He grabbed Otacon by the hips and brought him forward, so that their cocks were close enough to brush one another. “Now hold still,” he muttered. With great care, he held Otacon’s prick in his left hand, touching the tip to his own, and with his other hand, he slid his foreskin forward, stretching it as far as it could go, until he could slip it over Otacon’s glans.

“Oh!” Otacon jerked at the first smooth glide of it, but kept still when admonished by Snake. It was the smallest gesture, just an inch of sensation, but Otacon was acting like it was the whole world, as Snake held them both firmly and worked everything he had to spare over Otacon’s tip, bringing him inside. They were slick, and it made little wet noises.

Otacon panted, “Is…is this what it feels like for you all the time?”

“Yeah,” was all Snake could get out. There was a snarky comment somewhere, about the obviousness of the question, but he was intensely focused on the way the tip of Otacon’s dick was pressed up and rubbing against his own in their confined little space. He kept pinching his foreskin over Otacon’s glans, careful not to let it slip back; it felt good to him, too, but Otacon was shaking and whining like he’d never had his dick touched before.

“Snake, I— _hah_ —I think we need to stop, I don’t want to come too fast.”

“I don’t care how fast you come when we’re doing this,” Snake said flatly. “I’d rather you get your excitement out now so you can hold out longer when you fuck me in the ass.”

“When I—” Otacon’s full-body shudder threatened to disengage them. Snake held on and kept rubbing. Otacon gasped, “You want _me_ …to fuck _you_?” It was the first time Snake had ever heard Otacon say that word, and it made his dick pulse.

“Would you like to? Don’t bruise my ego by saying no, now.”

Clutching Snake’s shoulders, Otacon gave a final, strangled cry and made a big mess under Snake’s foreskin. It was so deliciously nasty, Snake couldn’t help but follow immediately; his head tipped back as he let Otacon’s still hard cock spring free of his sheath, and pumped himself to an intense climax, making an even bigger mess of the two of them. Otacon’s death-grip on his shoulders loosened, hands sliding up to touch his neck and beard.

“Well, that was new,” was all Snake could think to say as his dick softened in his hand and he surveyed the debauched, sweaty sight before him.

“I kinda want a shower,” Otacon said.

“Let’s do that.” Snake patted him on the knee to prompt him to get up. Otacon took his hands reluctantly from Snake, and needed several tries to rise, as his legs had cramped up from being in Snake’s lap. Snake was a little weak-kneed himself, but they somehow managed to help each other to the bathroom.

In the shower, Snake let Otacon play with his foreskin some more, and even showed him how he cleaned under it: he held his soft prick upwards, then gently pinched the foreskin to widen the opening, so that the shower spray could drizzle underneath it. After a few seconds, he squeezed himself with his fist, flushing the water out. Otacon found this brilliantly entertaining; he really had never seen what to Snake was just a normal dick, and his geeky enthusiasm was endearing.

They remained in the shower until the hot water ran out, then dried each other inefficiently, each trying to get at and tend to the other at the same time, unwilling to stand still and take turns. Otacon asked, “Were you serious about…when you said I could…do that to you?” Apparently, either _fuck_ was a word he could only utter once in his life, and Snake had made him use it up, or else he could only bring himself to say it in the heat of the moment. Snake supposed he would find out soon enough.

“Hell of a thing to joke about,” Snake replied as he worked his towel over Otacon’s limbs. “And a hell of a time to joke about it.”

“It’s just, it’s kind of involved. If you wanted to do that, um, tonight.”

Wrapping Otacon in the towel in order to pull him close, Snake whispered in his ear, “Yeah, but we’re a couple of resourceful guys, aren’t we?”

3.

Otacon watched Snake grasp the bathroom doorknob and stride, confidently naked, out into the freezing front room – and then immediately cringe and hiss, “Shit— _fuck_.” He had no time to laugh, though, as the cold air hit him next. They’d been fooling around so long, on the sofa and in the bathroom, that the fire in the stove had died. The steaming heat of the shower and their mutual erotic haze had made them both forgetful of it.

Otacon wrapped a towel around his waist and slung another over his shoulders like a cape, while Snake grabbed the comforter off the sofa and wrapped it around himself. Then he went into the kitchen and began opening cupboards. He found salt, pepper, sugar, flour…and a bottle of cooking oil. He held it up to show Otacon, shaking it so that the viscous contents sloshed around inside.

“How long do you think that stuff is good for, though?” Otacon said. “No one’s been here in years.”

“We’re not cooking with it, so I wouldn’t worry about it.”

As Otacon watched Snake saunter into the bedroom with the bottle of oil, something clicked, and instantly it seemed like his heart was trying to exit his body via his throat. He and Snake were going to have sex. But wait – they had just had sex. It had been an odd, silly kind of sex, but he was pretty sure it counted as real sex. So why was this making him more nervous? Was it because what they were going to do now was _fuck_? There was having sex and then there was fucking, everyone knew that, and what they had already done was not, you know, _fucking_.

Or was it more of a “fool me once” thing? Like, _Okay, I said I was swearing off getting involved with anyone ever again, ever, and yeah, then we fooled around on the couch, but anyone can have a little slip like that...but to make a clear-headed decision to go for it again right away? Nuh-uh. That’s just bad decision making, because_...

...because...

...why didn’t he want to do this again?

It took him a moment to collect his thoughts, to remember that all these chemicals that flooded his brain when he found someone attractive were bad news. What ensued then was an internal argument with little hope of resolution: on one hand, his track record was bad. On the other, Snake was different, right? Snake wasn’t in charge of him. He and Snake were partners. You couldn’t eat poison ten times and then look at a filet mignon and say, “Oh no, I shouldn’t eat anything ever again because when I eat things it turns out badly.”

Otacon couldn’t help the brief smirk that bubbled up. A delicious hunk of meat. That was Snake, alright.

 _See?_ he immediately scolded himself. _You’re thinking with your dick. No, worse: you’re thinking with your brain, which is way more dangerous_. His brain wanted those good feelings, the ones you got when you connected with someone romantically, sexually. Those feelings had brought stronger men than him to ruin, and if he were being honest with himself, Otacon would be hard-pressed to come up with any man in history who was _not_ stronger than him.

He only spent fifteen seconds or so having this grandiose internal debate, but Snake was too impatient even for that, and called from the bedroom, “You gonna stand out there all night? Or are you just waiting for me to warm up the bed for you?”

God, a warm bed filled with that body...a little world of their own under the blankets, in those big arms, a little world infused with that gruff laugh, that soft growl...oh, he was weak, he was so _weak_ , but his lizrad brain was in charge right now. Otacon made his way into the bedroom, promising himself that he would set aside several hours tomorrow to wallow in his crushing guilt.

He thought that maybe he and Snake could at least have a talk first about what they were going to do...but when he saw Snake lounging there in the bed, naked and looking languidly pleased to see him, he changed his mind. He always talked too much anyway, and it wasn’t that Snake didn’t like to talk at all, but he didn’t like to chit-chat. It had something to do with testosterone, Otacon seemed to remember reading somewhere. For manly men like Snake, not talking was just how they were made up, chemically. If a guy like him tried to get Snake to have a long conversation about their feelings, it would spoil it, probably.

And yet somehow the moment Otacon decided this, he still managed to blurt out, “Hey, um, just one thing before we...” Like his stupid frontal lobe just had to put one foot in the door.

He crept close enough to the bed that Snake could reach out and snatch his towels away and drop them on the floor. “Yeah, sure. But hurry up and get in here, before I get too cozy to want your damn ice-cube limbs in the bed.”

Otacon did not need to be told twice to get out of the freezing cold and under the warm blankets. He tucked himself up in the bed next to Snake, not looking at him, and huffed, “If we’re gonna do this, can you just make sure to uh…oh, geez.” He turned away and put his hand halfway over his mouth, and mumbled, “Just don’t say that I’m a ‘good boy,’ okay?”

Without hesitation, Snake said, “Okay.”

Otacon turned back halfway, looking at the ceiling now, and said, clearly, “And we can do it whatever way you want, except uh, you can’t ride me. You can’t be on top of me like that.”

Snake shrugged. “Fine with me.”

Otacon waited for a more judgmental, or at least confused, response, but none was forthcoming. He turned to Snake, shocked that it was as simple as that. “You don’t want to know why I’m asking that?”

“Do you want to tell me?”

“Not really. Maybe some other time.”

“Alright then, so we’re good?”

Otacon took a second to think about his answer to that, to think about what he’d had the guts to say just now. He hadn’t ever really thought about his past in terms of what had been _done_ to him, about what he didn’t want to be _done_ to him again because it brought back bad memories. He tended to think in terms of how _he’d_ messed up, about the bad things _he_ had done. But what he’d just said, he hadn’t realized until just now that it was an acknowledgment that bad things had happened, other people had done them, and he could put that in the past and have other, good things happen to him, things he didn’t have to feel repulsed about, things that had nothing to do with the past. Just making those two simple requests, and having them be immediately respected, made him feel as though an enormous burden of fear and shame had been lifted from his shoulders.

He turned so that he and Snake fully faced each other, their faces barely visible in the sliver of moonlight that came in through the curtains. He looked into Snake’s eyes, which gave him the squirmy feeling more intensely than ever before, even more than when he was in Snake’s lap an hour ago. He had no idea what to do next, how to get things started, though he wanted to get started very badly, so he said, “Um.” That was when Snake closed the distance between them with a kiss.

Otacon’s immediate reaction was to moan into Snake’s mouth, which he knew was weird and embarrassing to do, but he couldn’t help it. It was like his mouth was wired to every other nerve in his body – bolts of pleasure shot down his thighs, into his belly. It was more intense than having his dick touched. It felt so good to give in, to get that rush of dopamine.

And every time Snake touched him, that just ratcheted up all the good feelings…and Snake was touching him a _lot_. His hands grabbed everything he could reach, like he was hungry for it. He had told Otacon that he didn’t get involved with people, that they complicated his life, so maybe he didn’t do this very much – and the thought of Snake going absolutely buck wild now that he _had_ found someone to be with was overwhelming. Otacon forgot about his past mistakes, forgot about his own silly, skinny physique, because all he had room for in his brain now was Snake’s flawless machine of a body and its eagerness to grip him, rub against him…and to _accept_ him.

Snake only relented in order to reach past Otacon and snatch up the two discarded towels. He then grabbed a pillow, laid it in the middle of the bed, put the towels down over it, and flopped face-down on top of the whole thing, the pillows helping him to present his ass. He executed this setup with such quick precision that by the time he was ass-up, Otacon had barely realized he wasn’t being kissed anymore.

“You’re not shy about communicating what you want, huh?” was all Otacon could think to say.

Snake said over his shoulder, “I just hope you’re not shy about giving it to me.” Otacon’s dick twitched to hear this.

The bottle of cooking oil was clumsy and awkward. The oil itself did the job just fine, but a big bottle with a wide mouth was not ideal for precise distribution. It spilled onto the towels and onto Snake’s thighs when Otacon tried to pour it on his fingers. Eventually he figured out that it was better to pour it into his palm and then rub his fingers in that.

It didn’t help his nerves that Snake was under him, wiggling his ass with eagerness. With slippery hands, Otacon struggled to get a grip on Snake to spread him open and get to where he needed to be. But, when he pressed his finger to Snake’s entrance, the resistance he felt made him hesitate.

“I thought you wanted this,” Otacon said.

“I do want it.”

“Then you need to relax.” Otacon rolled his eyes at his own suggestion. Imagine giving a former Green Beret and spy an order like that. “Have you ever relaxed before? Do you know how?”

Snake snapped, “Do _you_?”

“You know what?” Otacon sighed. “That’s fair. But you’re the one who wants to be, you know, the bottom, so you’re gonna have to work with me here.” He realized that during that one sentence, his voice had gone up two octaves, and he flinched and cleared his throat. “Don’t make me have to write a program that makes the nanomachines do this for you.”

At this, Snake laughed, and Otacon took the opportunity of this distraction to slide one finger up inside him. The laugh was abruptly cut off, but it was replaced by a cute little whimper that was just as nice to hear.

Snake squeezed that finger hard, and Otacon could suddenly feel Snake’s pulse deep inside. He became fascinated, and twisted his finger around to see if he could feel it even more. In doing this, he brushed against Snake’s prostate, making his thighs twitch. Otacon could just barely touch it, but he memorized the location of the little bump of it, and when he got a second finger in, felt for it some more. This time, he could reach it a little better with his middle finger, and finally, as Snake groaned and grunted from the stimulation, he began to relax, which made it easier for Otacon to move his fingers in and out and around.

“Are you ready?” Otacon asked.

“Not yet,” Snake said. He reached back, grabbed Otacon’s wrist, urging him to remove his fingers. Then he flipped himself over, swinging one leg so that it cleared Otacon’s head easily. He had Otacon between his legs still, and his ass was still propped up, but now they faced each other.

“I wanna see your face,” Snake said.

“I can’t imagine why,” Otacon replied. He went to push his glasses up his nose, then said, “Oh, haha, I’ve still got my glasses on.”

He started to take them off, but Snake said, “That’s okay, you can leave them on.” After a pause, he added, “I dunno, seems like it might be kinda hot. Like weird-hot.”

“Well, good,” Otacon said, “because without them I can’t see what I’m doing.”

Snake favored him with a lopsided grin. “Might get confused and try to put it in my ear?”

Otacon laughed, but he did suspect that, with the way Snake was acting now, if any visual impairment hindered him for even one second, Snake would just grab his dick and stick it in for him.

Otacon poured more oil into his hand and applied it to his prick, but when Snake lifted his spread legs, he had to stop immediately, for fear that the tactile stimulation coupled with the most erotic thing he’d ever seen happen in front of him would bring things to a sudden conclusion. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and squeezed his prick just behind the head. This made the urgent feeling dissipate somewhat. Another deep breath, and he leaned forward to give Snake what he wanted.

The moment the tip of his cock touched the heat of Snake’s body, every nagging, negative, anxious voice in Otacon’s head quieted, and he felt a rush of overwhelming trust and contentment, pouring from him but at the same time into him. He believed now that he had finally uncovered what it was like to feel a true communion with another person, uncontaminated by fear and unrestrained by doubt, to anchor oneself inside another body, comfort and excitement blending to create that most addictive chemical cocktail. He sank inside with a gasp, hyperaware of every sensation over every inch of his body, from the rough sheets under his palms and knees to Snake’s breath on his face to the delicious confinement of his cock. It was so good, he retreated and immediately pushed in again – it lacked the initial shock of that first stroke, but was still warm and sweet. He held still, just feeling the hot embrace of Snake’s body.

Okay, now he just had to do a good job. He didn’t have a lot of experience at this, at sex in general, despite his early initiation, and he didn’t know whether telling Snake that would make things better or worse, so he didn’t mention it. He considered asking Snake what he wanted, what he needed Otacon to do to him in order to get off, but that struck him as being dirty talk, and he didn’t think he’d be good at that either, so he just started moving in and out, hoping that Snake would help him figure the rest out.

He was not disappointed: Snake did not hesitate to grab Otacon’s ass and pull him in hard, using that grip to direct him, to encourage him to keep getting deeper inside, for a start. Once Otacon had the rhythm down that Snake wanted, Snake released him, which freed up his hands, one to jerk off with, one to grip Otacon’s shoulder. Otacon dropped his head and put his back into it, focused on maintaining his speed and depth, but was interrupted when Snake said, “Hey. Look at me.”

Otacon obeyed – for one second. His glance flicked over Snake’s parted lips, his half-lidded eyes, then he lowered his head again and continued thrusting. His arms and legs were getting tired already. Snake grabbed him by the jaw until he made eye contact again.

“Look at me.”

Otacon shook with anxiety. “I can’t. It’s too intense. When I look in your eyes I feel like I’m gonna come instantly.”

Snake’s eyebrows lifted. “Just right now, or all the time?”

Otacon couldn’t help but giggle, but he still looked away.

“I’m really close,” Snake said, “so fuck me hard and look me in the eye and it’ll be fine.”

Otacon adjusted his stance so he could keep going just a little longer. Snake was pumping his dick hard and fast, and when Otacon looked at him, he smiled, until his eyes got dreamy and unfocused, and his whole body began to twitch and jerk. Looking into Snake’s eyes, then seeing his serene smile as he welcomed the first rush of his climax, got under Otacon’s ribs in a terrifyingly powerful way. He was wracked by a wave of such intense adoration, a connection so profound, it felt like he had shared it with Snake forever.

At the same moment Snake’s spunk hit Otacon’s belly, Otacon began to feel the rhythmic contractions around his cock, and that was the end of his restraint. When his body tipped over from inevitability into ecstasy, and just then his chest seized up, and tears sprang to his eyes. With every fiber of his being suffused with white-hot pleasure, he could do nothing to hold back a pathetic sob as one tear fell on Snake’s chest.

“Are you okay?” Snake asked, which was the worst thing he could say; who had ever felt their emotions well up, been asked if they were okay, and _not_ immediately burst into a flood of tears and gross sobbing?

Otacon turned his head, like he could somehow hide what was going on by doing so. Snake put a hand on the back of Otacon’s neck and said, “That’s okay, come here.” He pulled Otacon close, let him sob into his chest. Otacon heaved and blubbered for half a minute in Snake’s arms, before he finally found the breath to apologize. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” he gasped. “It was so good, I don’t know why I want to cry. It was good, I promise.”

“Maybe that’s why you need to cry? Because it was so good?”

But Otacon thought about other reasons he might have to cry: that this was too good to last, that this wonderful experience was doomed to be tainted by future tragedy. “Do you think maybe we made a mistake?” he asked.

“No.”

Otacon lifted his head. “How can you be sure?”

“I…” Snake rolled his eyes and sighed. “Listen. You’re the first person I’ve been with in a long time, and that’s because I just sort of…stopped trying.” Otacon watched raptly as Snake struggled to explain himself. “It was no good for a while, because I figured out I can’t, uh…I can’t finish, if I don’t feel like I can trust someone completely. I can’t let my guard down and let it happen. So there were some frustrating times, and then I gave it up. But I had a hunch about you, and it turns out I was right. So are you telling me that I’m a fool?”

Otacon’s eyes widened. “No, I would never say that. But I hope you’re right, because in the past—”

Snake put a stern hand to Otacon’s face. “Otacon,” he scolded. “What is so great about your past that you’re always thinking about it? What’s so wise about the decisions you made then that you’re always looking back on them to figure out what you should do now?”

Otacon blinked. “I never thought of it that way before.” He shifted so that he was lying beside Snake, but still tucked securely against him. They were sweaty and a mess, but he didn’t care; he actually kind of liked the way Snake smelled right now, the fresh exertion.

Snake yanked the pillow out from under himself and tossed it on the floor with his free hand, saying, “Maybe I’m biased, but I think you’ve made some pretty good choices tonight, and demonstrated excellent taste in sexual companionship.”

“Hmm.” Otacon had to sit up a little while Snake got himself resituated. “I guess I’m going to have to trust your intuition.” He quickly put his head back on Snake’s chest, Snake wrapped one arm around him, and the oxytocin did its part to help Snake’s argument land.

“We’re going to have to be everything to each other, aren’t we?” Otacon said. He hurriedly added, “I mean, I want us to be. That is, if it’s okay with you.”

“Yeah,” Snake said, stroking Otacon’s back. “To all of that.”

Otacon snuggled down further against Snake’s warmth with a smile on his face. His joy was overwhelming, and maybe, possibly, complete. He had lost a lot after Shadow Moses, and had often felt the lack in the months since, but right now he felt that he could ask for nothing more in the world: right now, he had not only a partner and a protector…not only a friend and a lover…he also had a six-foot, 165-pound personal hot water bottle. The nights, if nothing else, were going to get much easier.

**Author's Note:**

> lol so there were two snakes wearing sweaters in this fic
> 
> berlynn-wohl.tumblr and @berlynnwohl on Twitter for more of this sort of nonsense, including information about my work that is not available on AO3


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